The Asylum
by TitanWolf
Summary: Connie cuts, she cuts because it fills a cold void in herself, she cuts because the euphoric feeling it gives. her parents have had enough and she finds herself locked away in Cold River mental hospital. the roommate they give her is a lifeless recluse and she soon finds herself friends with a bulimic that won't go away. rated M for physical abuse and mental trauma.
1. Welcome To Cold River

Tears began to prick at Connie's eyes, her room, her home, she was leaving it all. She looked down at the bandages climbing up both her arms and sighed as a thin red line appeared near the top of her left bandage. She cut again last night, hidden under her blankets she felt the sweet, cool kiss of the razor blade glide across her arm.

Her parents were furious, she'd promised to stop; but; the empty feeling sitting in the bottom of her stomach kept eating at her insides. It would get so horrible that it would take several slices to make it stop. But; only for a little while.

"Connie, time to go," her dad called.

Taking one last look around at all the posters, the stuffed animals, and the various books lying around made her stomach twist with sadness. The gnawing void in her body was coming back. Sweat began to bead her forehead as she turned and dashed for the top of the stairs.

"I have to use the bathroom!" she called, somehow able to keep her voice calm. Running back up the hall she entered the bathroom and carefully shut and locked the door. Opening the medicine cabinet, she began to dig through all the pill bottles and makeup that filled each shelf before finding what she needed. Carefully she pressed down and slid one of the razor blades out in one quick motion. Licking her lips, she lowered the bandage several inches on her right arm. She bit her lip as the point slipped through her skin, and slowly drew it across her underarm several inches.

The relief was euphoric as the emptiness in her vanished back into its lair. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep from letting out a moan of pleasure. Grabbing several squares of toilet paper, she placed the razor in the middle square and folded them over each other before pressing it against her newest cut and sliding the bandage back up.

After flushing the toilet for effect, Connie headed downstairs to see both of her parents waiting for her. Her dad hadn't shaved this morning, the dark bags under his eyes told her he hadn't slept much. Her mom's face was hard, and emotionless, Connie knew she was furious, but; her eyes said she was sad.

"All ready to go?" her dad asked.

She nodded, like she really had a choice.

"Don't worry Connie, you'll like Cold River," her dad said, as they pulled out onto the freeway. they'd driven in silence for several miles. She could tell they wanted to break the tension. Connie doubted she'd like Cold River Mental Hospital at all. "Your mother and I drove up to see it last Friday, it was a lot better than we could have hoped. They'll take good care of you."

Neither of them brought up her bandages, or the fresh scars on her arms when they helped change her bandages the other night. Connie felt that she wanted them to actually say something about it, to not skate around the fact she kept slicing her arms open whenever she felt alone.

She thought about school, and all the kids. The name calling, the racist jokes, the punches and kicks.

It was their fault her parents were carting her off to the nuthouse.

Cold Water was larger than she expected. The main building had to be 3 stories at least with several more outlying buildings around it and a fence that ran completely around all of them. As they pulled though the gate, she caught a glimpse of people, probably patients dressed all in white, out in the yard.

"Here we are," her dad said. Connie looked down at the small suitcase beside her, then up at her mother as she opened the door.

"Let's go," she said, her voice emotionless.

Approaching the door, they were met by a tall woman with white hair done up into buns. She was dressed in a white nurse's uniform. Connie stared out at the dark clouds growing in the distance, lightning shot across the sky and thunder rolled after several seconds.

"I have no doubt that Connie will be happy here," the nurse said to her parents. Connie didn't buy it.

The nurse, Holly Blue her name tag read, led the three of them inside. They went through two sets of door before coming out into a waiting room.

"If you'll please wait here i'll get Dr. Trager for you," she said.

Connie hugged her suitcase to her chest and stared down at the checkered floor, kicking her feet. She didn't belong here, she wasn't crazy. Her dad wrapped his arm around her and she leaned against him. Glancing over she watched her mother looking around, impatiently tapping her foot.

"What's taking so long?" she asked.

"He's probably busy, it is full of patients and he is the head doctor," her dad replied.

Connie looked down and sighed.

"How long do I have to be here?" she asked.

She looked up to see her dad nervously rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well, I wouldn't think very long," he said finally, looking down at her. "Your not sick like a lot of the people here. Your just…."

The door opening cut him off, Holly Blue had finally returned. Dr. Trager was tall, with broad shoulders. A thick, bushy handlebar mustache hung below a hooked nose.

"Mr. and Mrs. Maheswaran, my name is Rickard Trager," he said in a thick English accent. "Holly Blue, please show Connie to her room while her parents and I discuss her treatment."

"Of course, come along sweetie,"

Connie looked up at her parents, before quietly following after the nurse.

She changed in the bathroom. The all white outfit and shoes seemed to make her dark skin pop out, she looked down at her bandages, and felt a coldness in her belly. She began to sweat, she bit her lip and cursed silently as the coldness began to climb higher and higher. Rolling down her bandage, she quickly unwrapped the razor fro the toilet paper and slowly slid it across her right underarm. She took a deep breath, holding it in for several seconds before slicing her arm again. Letting her breath out, she was relieved to feel the coldness retreating. Connie wiped her arm with a paper towel and waited for the bleeding to stop before rolling her bandage back up. The razor was carefully wrapped up in clean toilet paper and hidden back under her other bandage. They would probably find it.

The rec room was full of activity. Several patients were sitting cross legged around a coffee table, a tall house of cards built before them. A short pudgy girl with long white hair was stretched out on a recliner eating chips. In front of a TV she saw two boys, one with curly dark hair holding a pink stuffed lion, the other was extremely pale with a single clump of blond hair on the top of his head.

"This is the best episode of Crying Breakfast Friends yet, right Onion?" the dark haired boy asked excitedly.

"More like the same episode," the chip eating girl mumbled.

Around the corner they ran into a pale skinned woman furiously scrubbing the floor. Connie noticed her hands were cut and bruised. She looked up at them in surprise.

"Holly Blue, I need more lemon pledge!" she exclaimed. She jumped to her feet and seized the nurse by the collar of her uniform. "Its too dirty, I need more cleaning products!"

"You need to take your medicine, Pearl," Holly Blue replied. Connie noticed the nurse motioning quickly with one hand. Within seconds a massive, extremely muscular woman grabbed the woman named Pearl and pulled her away. "Jasper, please take Pearl back to her room and see that she gets a big douse of her medicine."

Jasper nodded. "You want me to be gentle-" she was cut off by Pearl reaching back and scratching her face. Three long scratches began to ooze blood. "-Hard way it is!"

In one swift motion, Jasper release her hold on the smaller woman before decking her with a punch that made her spin completely around. Connie watched as Jasper carried off the unconscious Pearl under her arm.

She kept quiet, that looked like something she shouldn't bring up. She imagined herself with a lobotomy scar, sitting in front of the TV with those other kids, drooling like an idiot.

"Here we are," Holly Blue said. The room had no door, none of them did. Apparently it made getting to more severe patients in an emergency easier. The room was slightly bigger than her room at home. On one side was a mattress with a sheet and blanket folded up into squares on top of the other with a pillow resting on the top. "Over there is your roommate, Lapis Lazuli."

The other bed was a mess, the blanket and sheet were balled up and discarded on the floor. The mattress was covered in long scratches leaving the foam exposed. Lapis Lazuli was curled up in a ball up against the corner of the wall.

"What's wrong with her?" Connie whispered, afraid to speak too loudly.

Holly Blue shrugged. "She was here when I started," she replied. "I'll leave you to get settled in."

Connie kept glancing nervously over her shoulder every few seconds. She kept expecting the older girl to have moved or to have found her staring at her. After fixing the sheet and folding out the blanket, Connie climbed up onto her bed and opened her suitcase.

She pulled out a beaten and battered book about the various gods of Egypt.

"Sobek, Anhur, Anubis, Isis, Set," all the pages were dogeared and some were torn in places, but; she loved it. The pictures were well drawn, and it was a perfect memory game to see if she could remember all the gods by just their picture. "Wadjet, Thoth, Osiris, Ra, Horus-"

"What're you doing?" Connie jumped when a new voice filled the air. Looking over at the other bed she saw that Lapis hadn't moved an inch. Looking to the door, Connie saw the girl that had been eating chips earlier.

"I'm trying to remember all the names of the different Egyptian gods," she said, setting the book down on the bed beside her.

"Sounds booooring! i'm Amethyst by the way," she said, before running and hopping up on the bed. "I see you've already met the living statue, just kidding, she'll move when Jasper comes by later."

"What's that mean?" Connie asked.

Amethyst wiggled her eyebrows and smiled. "You'll see, so what're you locked up for?" she looked down at Connie's arms. "Ah! Cutter huh? you'll fit right in with all the others."

Connie blushed and turned her body away and hugged her arms to her chest. "Why are you here?" Connie asked.

Amethyst blew a stray strand of hair out of her face. "My mom thinks I have an 'eating disorder'," Amethyst said, finger quoting eating disorder. "I just love to eat, and sometime I puke."

"I saw this woman earlier, she was cleaning and-"

"That's Pearl, she's really OCD about stuff," Amethyst said. "Come on, i'll show you some of the other wackos here!"

Seizing Connie's hand in her own, Amethyst dragged the younger girl behind her. She found herself having to lightly jog to keep from behind pulled over. Soon Amethyst stopped outside one of the countless rooms.

Connie peeked in to see a small girl drawing with a crayon clenched in her teeth. It was then that she noticed that the girl was missing both her arms and legs.

"That's Peridot, she used to be this super famous super smart science fair geek," Amethyst said. "One day the thing she was working on blew up in her face, like actually set fire to her room blew up, they amputated all four limbs."

"That's horrible!" Connie exclaimed. She quickly covered her mouth after realizing she spoke way too loud.

She glanced in the room to see Peridot looking at her. "Quit feeling sorry for me!" she shrieked.

Amethyst grabbed Connie's hand and dragged her off, leaving Peridot's screams dwindling behind them.

The next room was the only one with a door.

Inside was a tall woman wrapped up in a straight jacket sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"We need to keep calm and- WE NEED TO KILL THEM ALL!"

"That's Garnet, she's totally schizo. One minute she's all prim and proper and the next she's leaping across the table and stabbing some poor jerk with a Spork," Amethyst said.

Looking back at the window, Connie saw that Garnet had vanished. She jumped back in fright when Garnet pooped out from the side and pressed her face against the glass.

"LET US OUT!" Connie fell back on her butt and screamed, tears began rolling down her face at the sight of the twisted and distorted face pressed against the glass.

Amethyst grabbed Connie and pulled her away. When they were well away from the door she pulled the younger girl into a hug.

Connie held onto her as tight as she could.

 **END CHAPTER 1**


	2. Endless Void

Connie wiped the remaining tears slowly sliding down her cheek with the back of her hand.

"You OK?" Amethyst asked. The two sat in the middle of the hallway, around them people passed by without a second glance, nothing out of place in Cold River.

"Yeah, just everything that's happened catching up," she said.

Amethyst stood up and stretched. "Come on, its almost time for lunch!"

Connie stood up and trailed after the shorter girl. She couldn't place the feeling, but it was telling her that Amethyst seemed like she was hiding something behind her smile and cheery attitude.

They passed by a room filled with sobbing. Stopping, Connie looked in to see the woman from earlier, Pearl was struggling against the straps holding her down. Going in, Connie saw that her wrists and feet were bleeding from the severe chafing and her struggles.

"Let me out!" she wailed. The side of her face was black and purple, from her left cheek up to her eye was swollen. "I want Rose! Bring her to meeeee!"

"Are you OK? Connie asked. Pearl froze, she stared at Connie with her good eye bulging out of her head. "Do you need a nurse?"

Pearl smiled, but; it wasn't in happiness. It was a detached, almost maniacal.

"Pretty girl, nice girl can you remove these straps?" she asked. Pearl began nodding her head. "Of course you will, you're a nice girl. Nice girls help people!"

A hand snapping onto Connie's wrist caused her to jump. She pulled away and turned to see Amethyst.

"Trust me, you don't wanna do that," she said. "She's almost as bad as Garnet. Come on."

As Connie was being led away, Pearl began to shriek.

"Who's Rose?" Connie asked.

Amethyst didn't break stride or look back. "She's dead," she said.

"What happened?" Amethyst rubbed the back of her head.

"Its… complicated. Hold on, I gotta use the bathroom," she said, quickly ducking into a restroom they passed.

Connie leaned against the wall and began to count the floor tiles. After several minutes she began to feel uneasy, like someone was watching her. Looking down the hall, something quickly ducked out of sight. Stepping out further into the middle of the hall, Connie tried to see who or what it was to no effect.

Turning around she jumped back at the closeness of the little blonde boy from earlier. He had standing almost close enough for her to feel his breath on the back of her neck.

She took a deep breath. "You really scared me there for a second. you're Onion, right?" she remembered the other little boy calling him that. He didn't answer, he only kept staring blankly at her unblinkingly. He held out a hand, she looked down to see it was holding a hot cup of coffee. "For me? Thank you, but I don't-"

He tossed it in her face.

She screamed, she stumbled back and furiously rubbed at her burning face. Her eyes burned, she rubbed them vigorously, trying to get the scalding liquid out. Something slammed into her back, Connie felt her head bounce off the floor from the sudden impact.

A weight in the middle of her back kept her on the floor, when two tiny hands grabbed both sides of her head she realized that it was Onion. Before she could process all that was happening her face was driven into the floor. A dazed feeling came over her as a buzzing filled her ears. She opened her eyes as he lifted her head up and drove it back down.

She felt her face erupt in white hot pain as a loud crack filled her ears. Again and again she found her head slammed repeatedly into the unforgiving floor. Each time she felt more and more disoriented and sick. Darkness began to fill her vision as her eyes slowly began to swell shut. Everything felt far off to her, like she was floating in a dark pool of water and sinking faster and faster with each second.

A distant yell floated to her ears, and the pressure on her head was gone. Weakly, Connie somehow was able to roll herself onto her back. She couldn't feel her nose, and little pieces of something were filling her mouth. Just before her eyes completely shut she could make out the vague form of Amethyst struggling with Onion.

She was trapped in a dream, at least, she thought it was a dream. In one vision Amethyst was holding her and screaming, one of her hands soaked in blood. In another Dr. Trager was yelling something in words she couldn't understand. That one faded and was replaced by her mother furiously shaking nurse Holly Blue.

These and other things went past her as she lay dreaming. One stuck out to her more than the others. She was back in the room she shared with Lapis Lazuli, moonlight was streaming through the window. She laid unable to move, heavy footsteps began to filled the air like sounds of thunder. Jasper's naked form slid out of the shadows, moonlight bathed her muscular body, her massive breasts resembled twin moons, her nipples were long and big.

Connie watched as Jasper moved back into the shadows towards Lapis' bed. In the darkness the squeaking of bed springs sounded loud to her ears.

 _"Stop it!"_ a voice whispered, barely heard. The bed springs squeaked again. _"No!"_

 _"You like it, you_ runt _!"_ another, harder voice replied. _"Why fight, you always give in."_

A wet slapping sound began to softly fill the air. A strange smell followed after it. In the darkness Connie could hear the two voice mix together.

 _"Please- OH!"_

 _"That's my girl,"_ the voice mumbled. _"Come to mama."_

Connie felt herself grow lightheaded again.

 _"Yes- oh yes!"_ she couldn't tell which voice it was anymore. The two became intertwined together to form something altogether different. _"More-More-MORRRRE!"_

Connie awoke to find Amethyst sitting beside her bed. The short woman hopped up when she realized Connie was awake.

"Hey! Thank God you're awake," she said, gently pulling Connie into a hug. "I was worried there for a second!"

"What- what happened?" Connie's voice was hoarse and her throat hurt. Her head felt huge, and her face was numb.

Amethyst looked away. "Well… Onion beat your head against the floor," she said. "He broke your nose…. And some of your teeth."

She noticed Amethyst hand was wrapped up in thick layers of gauze.

"What happened to your hand?"

Amethyst looked down at her wrapped hand. "This? Onion bit two of my fingers off," she said. "They sowed them back on really fast, was kinda weird watching them do it without feeling it."

Connie tried to sit up, but a sudden wave of nausea made her fall back on her pillow.

"You should probably not sit up, or move," Amethyst said. "They think you have a concussion."

Without realizing it, Connie drifted back to sleep.

Amethyst smiled sadly, and gently ruffled Connie's hair.

She looked over at Lapis, the blue-haired girl was in the same position she always was. After leaving Connie's room Amethyst walked slowly down the hall. She looked down at the cracked floor outside the bathroom, and balled her good hand into a fist.

Amethyst looked quickly down both sides of the hall and ducked into the room. Onion; was strapped down tight, he couldn't move a muscle. She stood over him, he stared blankly up at the ceiling. She began to grind her teeth.

She spotted a pillow laying discarded on the floor. Looking back at Onion, she saw his head was resting on the mattress. She bent down and picked the pillow up. It felt heavy in her hand. A nauseous feeling began to grow in her stomach as she held the pillow up above Onion's face.

"Go to hell," she whispered.

She pressed the pillow down over his face and leaned over, putting her full weight onto her arm. Onion only clenched his hand open and shut several times. After several minutes Amethyst threw the pillow across the room and took off running.

She entered the bathroom and slammed the door shut. She knelt down and stared at her reflection in the water. Her face looked tired and sick. She clenched her eyes shut before jamming her finger down her throat. She threw up until all that came out was a sick yellow bile.

She fell over onto the floor and began to cry.

Connie felt a weight being placed on her chest, her eyes shot open, expecting to see Onion coming to finish her off. But; it was a stuffed pink lion.

"Lion likes you!" a cheery voice said. She glanced over to see the other boy from hr first day at Cold River. "He's never this affectionate!"

"Who are you?" she asked, trying to stay awake.

"I'm Steven, you're Connie right?" he asked. "Sadie told me you got hurt playing with Onion last Monday."

"He tried to kill me," she said. Whatever medicine they gave her was making it hard to stay focused. She kept almost nodding off, and staying awake made her face feel numb.

Steven laughed. "Onion wouldn't do that," he replied. "He just plays too rough that's all, oh! Let me go get him, I bet he'll want to see you!"

Before the words he said made their way to Connie's sleep deprived brain, Steven grabbed his lion and ran off.

"Good morning!" Connie reluctantly opened her eyes to see Holly Blue carrying a tray holding a pitcher of water and several pill bottle. "Good to see your awake today Connie, you gave us quite a scare."

Holly Blue sat the tray down before pouring a cup of water. Carefully she pulled Connie up to a sitting position.

"You won't have to worry about Onion anymore sweetie," she said, carefully gathering several pills from each bottle. "Dr. Trager ordered a frontal lobotomy."

"Really?" she asked.

Holly Blue nodded. "This wasn't the first time Onion…. Played too rough," she said, trying to find the right words. "Here you go, some painkillers and an anti-inflammatory."

The pills went down easier than Connie expected. She drank a whole cup of water and then another. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was.

"Good, i'll leave the water here in case you feel thirsty," Holly Blue said. "Dr. Trager is bringing in an orthodontist to have a look at your teeth in a few days."

Connie drifted off to sleep.

Her dreams were filled with the dead-eyed Onion chasing her down an endless hallway.

 **END CHAPTER 2**


End file.
